1940: “These mechanical monstrosities lack the intuitive check of a human mind. A mathematician can spot a stray digit through reason; a machine will blindly process an error to its conclusion. We are trading the elegance of thought for a noisy, fallible crate of glass and wire.”

1950: “Direct control is the only honest way to command a machine. If you cannot visualize the specific vacuum tube you are firing, you aren’t truly programming. To delegate this to any intermediary is to invite a loss of precision that the hardware simply cannot afford.”

1955: “These ‘mnemonics’ are a crutch for the lazy. By using words instead of addresses, the programmer loses the vital ‘feel’ for memory layout. We are seeing a five-fold decrease in efficiency; no automated assembler can ever match the tight, hand-calculated loops of a master of bits.”

1965: “Compilers are the death of performance. These languages allow ‘programmers’ who don’t even understand the CPU architecture to bloat memory with generic subroutines. Software is becoming a black box—impenetrable, unoptimized, and dangerously detached from the reality of the silicon.”

… did you just post “Why are ‘Why is X bad?’ posts bad?”

UI’s peaked with the CLI. It’s all been downhill from there

Being a particularly dumb fellow layman but seeing no other comments after 18h…

I’m picturing a ruler thrown into gravity waves and another ruler somehow measuring the parts of the first one where millimeter markers stop being one millimeter apart.

Now for Gemini’s summary:

Space-based gravitational wave detection is the study of ripples in spacetime using observatories positioned in orbit rather than on Earth. While ground-based detectors like LIGO and Virgo have already proven these waves exist, they are limited by their size and Earth’s seismic “noise.”

How It Works

Space-based detection uses laser interferometry across millions of kilometers of vacuum.

• The Formation: LISA will consist of three spacecraft flying in a triangular formation, roughly 2.5 million kilometers apart, orbiting the Sun behind the Earth.

• The “Arms”: Each spacecraft contains “test masses” (gold-platinum cubes) that float freely in a vacuum, shielded from solar wind and radiation.

• The Measurement: Lasers are fired between the spacecraft to monitor the distance between these cubes. When a gravitational wave passes through the formation, it causes the fabric of space to stretch and squeeze, changing the distance between the cubes by a fraction of an atom’s width.

… Honestly I’m feeling reasonably good about my dummy understanding. The “rulers” are lasers being shot between satellites all around the Earth, but I think it sounds roughly right?

I’m fairly sure this isn’t something human brains can do

Vim sorely underrated. Great tools/hotkeys. Felt like a master pianist clacking away while the terminal went berserk until suddenly the 2 hour job was done in 20 minutes.

No no no. I gave them CULTURE! A wonderful work culture.

And security! Sure, not the security I decided I need for myself, and it’s only really present as long as they’re profitable to me, but security nonetheless.

After all, I had the idea and stuck my neck out to secure the financing, which is far more important than the actual daily labor that keeps things running.

We’re like a family, see.

The vacuum sealer reminds me: a handheld electric pump.

Some are strong enough to blow up car tires. Especially if you have kids, they’re great for inflating water toys and balls and whatnot.

Second the warm white Christmas lights.

They can quickly make a depressing apartment feel like a warm home.

LAN tester.

I thought of it as fancy electrician / network equipment. Not anymore. Now it’s basic troubleshooting / procedure.

On a particularly frustrating switch installation, I picked one up for like $20 on Amazon, and it’s made me much less annoyed by network changes.

For context, I’m one of those people who hoards any electronic bits that might prove useful on a hobby project later, so lots of old patch cables and cable reels with unknown breaks, so maybe a LAN tester is really only worth it for others like that, but I’d recommend it to any level of tech enthusiast at least.